That’s roughly how Imperial Sugar Co. belatedly explained why it installed equipment that likely led to the deaths of 14 of its workers.

They died — and 39 others were hurt — when its Port Wentworth refinery blew up and burned on Feb. 7, 2008.

The government fined Imperial more than $6 million for 200-plus safety violations at Port Wentworth and its Gramercy, La., plant.

Voluminous evidence showed that Imperial officials long knew both were riddled with deadly hazards, but did little to remove them.

But federal prosecutors last year declined to press criminal charges against Imperial or its executives.

A U. S. Chemical Safety Board probe found that the 2007 installation of covers over sugar conveyor belts likely caused the initial blast, triggering secondary ones responsible for most of the deaths.

Mid-level managers and supervisors said under oath that they knew that sugar dust — which fueled the first conflagration — could explode.

And some testified that they knew bearings under the belts could overheat and ignite sugar dust if it were airborne in a confined space. That’s what CSB concluded happened on Feb. 7, 2008.

The company didn’t study potential explosion risks before the covers were installed, an Imperial engineer told lawyers for victims of the disaster, in part, because “resources were thin.”

If it had, it might have learned of a disaster just three hours down the road from its corporate headquarters in Sugar Land, Texas.

A National Academy of Science study found that a conveyor cover intensified a 1981 dust blast that killed nine people at a grain elevator in Corpus Christi.

As the fateful day approached in Georgia, Imperial managers knew they had, in effect, created a time bomb.

“We have a serious explosion risk,” plant safety director Darren Pevey told colleagues in a Jan. 20 email about the area under the covers.

Company officials testified that they never considered suspending production to defuse the bomb. They did try — unsuccessfully — to keep sugar from accumulating under the conveyors.

On the afternoon of Feb. 7, an engineer and a manager talked about hiring an outside contractor to clean up sugar piled up near where the first explosion originated. They decided to wait until the next day.

But what does all this have to do with the feds making them do it? Until recently, the answer was gathering dust in CSB files.

Start with the adage that success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan. No one at Imperial ever owned up during CSB’s’s interviews to proposing that the conveyors be enclosed.

Because installing the covers cost more than $250,000, company policy called for approval by then-CEO Robert Peiser. But Peiser told me recently he didn’t recall the issue.

Some Imperial employees told CSB they thought covers were installed because AIB International, which inspects food plants for sanitation, wanted them. Imperial personnel speculated that AIB suggested that the conveyor needed protection from contamination by debris and pests.

Itself still a party to litigation stemming from the disaster, AIB wouldn’t comment earlier this month.

Anyway, CSB suggested in its draft investigation report — shared with the company for its comments — that the covers were installed to prevent such accidental contamination.

But company lawyer Charlie Morgan responded in 2009 that the covers were installed as part of a federal “post 9111 (sic) emphasis related to intentional food contamination via third-party.”

The only example Morgan cited was a 2003 General Accounting Office document citing such concerns and urging food processors to draw up prevention plans. One of many issues worth a hard look, it said, was “food conveyances.”

But GAO also said explicitly that businesses weren’t required to do anything.

Morgan’s missive didn’t identify anyone at Imperial who decided that the covers were needed because what he implied was a nudge by GAO. Nor did he cite any other document that required — or even advised — any such measure.

Not surprisingly, I was eager to talk with him. But he didn’t respond to a phone call and an email — which included an excerpt from his response to CSB.

Bottom line: The available evidence strongly suggests that feds didn’t make Imperial do it. Nor did the dog eat its homework.

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